David Cronenberg’s Map to the Stars: threesomes, incest, a dead dog and whiny farts

In a scene that sticks from Map to the Stars, David Cronenberg’s Grand Guignol of a Hollywood satire, Julianne Moore, playing an ageing Hollywood never-has-been, sits on the loo in front of her PA, expelling tired whiny farts from her arse, while listing – her trout pout doing its best impression of a quivering anus – the names of the laxatives and prescriptive drugs she needs as if they were old friends. Except she doesn’t have any friends; the only people she knows are casting directors who don’t call back.

And it’s no wonder Havana Segrand’s bodily functions have stalled (surely a first for Cronenberg). Not only is she plagued by visions of her dead mother, a cult actress who died in a fire, but her therapist, John Cusack – ever brilliant and a dead ringer for David Guest these days – seems to be an alumnus of the same school of self-help as Patrick Swayze in Donnie Darko or Tom Cruise in Magnolia.